"No analysis is subtle and delicate enough to represent adequately the
state of mind under which we believe, or the subjects of belief, as they
are presented to our thoughts. The end proposed is that of delineating, or,
as it were, painting what the mind sees and feels: now let us consider what
it is to portray duly in form and colour things material, and we shall
surely understand the difficulty, or rather the impossibility of
representing the outline and character, the hues and shades, in which any
intellectual view really exists in the mind, or of giving it that substance
and that exactness in detail in which consists its likeness to the
original, or of sufficiently marking those minute differences which attach
to the same general state of mind or tone of thought as found in this or
that individual respectively .... Is it not hopeless, then, to expect that
the most diligent and anxious investigation can end in more than in giving
some very rude description of the living mind, and its feelings, thoughts,
and reasonings? (University Sermons, Sermon xiii: "Implicit and Explicit
Reason")

Davis then comments, "Now if this is not certainty, then it is not mere
scepticism either. For although Newman describes the task of representing
reality inside and out as finally 'hopeless', it is only finally and not
absolutely 'hopeless'. To be very precise, it is hopeless to expect more
than a very rude description. But it isn't entirely a hopeless thing to end
up giving a very rude description. Nor is it hopeless to hope for something
a little more than that...."

Discussing Ruskin's view in Modern Painters: "The gap between
representation and what it stands for itself constitutes part of the
communicative power of art; the gap holds within it a silent and implicit
call, which the work incorporates within its very means and limitations, a
call for a bridging imaginative vision between the work and the life it
recalls. Artistic realism for Ruskin does not finish life off; it is an art
that precisely sites itself between art and life."

So, our task is not entirely hopeless, nor should we give up on hoping for
something better. And in the gap between the not-entirely-hopeless and the
better-to-be-wished-for is a call we need to be hearing?